“How come dere's dese kiff and kin on dere when it only just come up from under der water?” he said.

“Good question,” said Vimes.

“Dey been holding dere breath?”

“I doubt it.”

There was more in the air than the salt of the sea, Vimes thought. There was some other current. He could sense it. Suddenly, the problem was Klatch.

Ankh-Morpork had been at peace with Klatch, or at least in a state of non-war, for almost a century. It was, after all, the neighbouring country.

Neighbours… hah! But what did that mean? The Watch could tell you a thing or two about neighbours. So could lawyers, especially the real rich ones to whom “neighbour” meant a man who'd sue for twenty years over a strip of garden two inches wide. Peopled live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work every day, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.

And now some damn rock had risen up out of the sea and everyone was acting as if Klatch had let its dog bark all night.

“Aagragaah,” said Detritus, mournfully.

“Don't mind me, just don't spit it on my boot,” said Vimes.

“It mean—” Detritus waved a huge hand, “like… dem things, what only comes in…” he paused and looked at his fingers, while his lips moved “…fours. Aagragaah. It mean lit'rally der time when you see dem little pebbles and you jus' know dere's gonna be a great big landslide on toppa you and it already too late to run. Dat moment, dat's aagragaah.”

Vimes's own lips moved. “Forebodings?”

“Dat's der bunny.”

“Where does the word come from?”

Detritus shrugged. “Maybe it named after der soun' you make just as a t'ousand ton of rock hit you.”

“Forebodings…” Vimes rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Well, I've got plenty of them…”

Landslides and avalanches, he thought. All the little snowflakes land, light as a feather — and suddenly the whole side of a mountain is moving…